Rolandt

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don’t interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don’t walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others’ emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies

Price Tags has explored the Country Lane, and there has been some speculation as to the origins of this concept and why it disappeared from our urban consciousness. The County  Lane  was so right in so many ways-it was sustainable, dealt well with torrential rains and sitting groundwater, prevented flooding onto residential properties (that is a big issue when lanes are paved), slowed traffic down, minimized off gassing (with no pavement being installed) and surprise-formed a fabulous public space that was quickly taken over by neighbours for barbeques and even evening movie screenings with lawn chairs in the lane serving as movie seats. I know it sounds utopian, and it was the right idea, just at the wrong time.

In 2013, Price Tags revisited the country lane as did the National Post in this article entitled  “Forgotten Country Lane Could Be the Answer to Vancouver’s Desire for Green Space”.

The City of Vancouver is unusual in that the city has functioning back lanes in most of the street grid. When the city was laid out these lanes were to be “service” lanes for garbage pick up and in the downtown core are efficient for commercial deliveries.

In the 20th century, there were a lot of  Vancouver residential lanes that were dirty, gritty and dusty, and could be “improved” through-wait for it-paving. Asphalt did make these lanes more efficient for traffic and less muddy in winter, but brought its own set of evils, including speeding, flooding onto private property, off gassing of the asphalt, and the decimation of any gardens or plants that were planted in the dusty lane. There is a paving lane program that is part of  the Local Improvement Program. Information on this process is here. Residents could sign up other residents and petition the city to have back lanes paved, with the cost being shared between the property owners and the city.

Resident Sharole Tylor, who lived on 28th Avenue  east of Fraser Street is what Malcolm Gladwell would call an “early adapter”. Sharole’s block was one of the first to have adopted blooming boulevards. Her father had been an engineer for B.C. Hydro and provided the design for  the bulletin board frames you will see throughout the neighbourhood. When Sharole had an idea she also had a plan to implement it, and that was the case for the country lane.

Instead of paving, Sharole proposed that the City trial a demonstration project of a sustainable lane, with two concrete wheel runs.  David DesRochers was a versatile engineer at the City of Vancouver looking at more sustainable textures and finishes to the traditional paved back lane. Under his leadership, David Yurkovich, a landscape architect helped design three demonstration lanes, using structural soil contained in heavy vinyl cells. The first lane east of Fraser Street was built in concert with residents on a weekend, so that neighbours would know how the lane worked, and also how to replace any bricks that may be dislodged on the runs to their garages.

Comox & Bidwell

Urban landscape: Pender Street, near New Town bakery.

As I recently said, this is Apple territory. But when I travel, I always pack the Surface 3. It has a unique set of features that would require me to carry much more Apple gear. Since I like to travel light, that is not a good option. The photo shows four important things:

1. Surface Pen. I could use iPad Pro instead for pen support.
2. USB A port for thumb drives. Not on the iPad Pro. Would require MacBook Pro.
3. USB charging. MacBook Pro needs its own power brick.
4. Decent keyboard with not so decent trackpad.

I could carry the Macbook but then were unable to use a pen and would need the power brick. Or I could use the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, but then were unable to read USB media.

This is what I am packing: five port USB charger with wires, iPhone 6S Plus with Olloclip Active Lens, BlackBerry Priv, Surface 3, power bank, Plantronics headset. Yes, always two phones.

I had high hopes that Microsoft might be able to get their act together when building the Anniversary Update for Windows 10. But so far, things do not look promising.

Not only does Microsoft install this self serving piece of crapware. They also spam the Info-Center with repeated push messages. I assume they want to teach other developers to do the same. And lastly, this piece of crapware does not even know that I am already an Office 365 subscriber. Although I am logged into my Microsoft account.

Microsoft, do you serioulsy assume that Windows users never heard of Office 365? Do you need to push them, repeatedly? Even if they already have the product?

This is just incompetence.

Steve Burgess writes in 24 Hours to describe new sociological studies.  These reveal that masses of ordinary people can, and do, slip between previously immutable and convenient pigeon-holes with apparent ease.

Journalists everywhere have operated on an editorial imperative that assigns each person to a lifetime in one and only one transportation mode — viciously hostile to the other modes.  This, according to scientists, is not the case.

Previously thought to be divided into three sub-species — motorist, cyclist, and pedestrian — of humans, according to the new research, may be capable of shifting from one group to another.

The implications for urban transport and world peace could be profound. . . .

. . .  If subsequent research confirms the findings, it may lead to new approaches whereby motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians realize that, rather than mutually antagonistic groups, they are all part of a civil society in which the interests of one need not threaten the interests of another. The consequences of such a development are as yet unquantifiable, but researchers are optimistic about a decrease in yelling.

I must say that the article’s headline exemplifies the old paradigm — divide people by transportation mode and play up any real or imagined hostility.

This July, in a fit of over enthusiasm, I signed up to do Seattle to Portland, which entails riding 205 miles in two days. Note that I haven’t done anything like this since Dalmac 2000 (which was also pre kids), and so I’ve been a bit concerned about being undertrained. To make thing things even more fun, I’ve decided to do it on my Tikit, for reasons of logistics, etc. I’ve been putting a bit of mileage on the Tikit, and I’ve found two things for sure: one is that I’m a bit slower on it than on my Tamarack, but on the plus side the Selle Anatomica saddle is more comfortable than the Brooks B17 on that bike.

Also, TBNer’s look a bit surprised when I show up to a ride with small wheels. This was June 19, and it was really hot so I wimped out and only did 74K that day.

One thing I did back in March was to finally install the fenders that were originally delivered with the bike. They work well, and don’t interfere too much with the fold. I will have to dismount them to suitcase the bike.

The other thing I soon realized was that the water bottle mount on the back of the seat tube is totally unworkable, so I decided to mount a cage on the stem. It is off to the side so that it doesn’t interfere with the fold.

I used these bottle cage clamps from Velo Orange that were serviceable, but wouldn’t necessarily work with all bottle cages since they have no holes for cage mounting bolts.

Another note: over time I noticed that the rear brake action was getting spongy, and I found out that this was because the barrel adjuster to the travel agent on the rear had broken, causing some friction. My particular setup has tri bar type road levers, and so travel agents are used on front and rear, and the way that the brake cable on the rear came in at an angle to the linear pull brake must have stressed it enough to break this part. I ended up getting a new unit, although in retrospect I could have gotten away with just a new barrel adjuster. The new unit is black, though!

Note that the rear brake cable on the Tikit must be tandem length. I discovered this on Canada Day, and so I had to cannibalize another bike to get this done for a ride later that day.

Further note to self: when I get back from Seattle, remember to put a new brake cable on the back of wife’s recumbent.

The original plan was to use this Carradice Bag mounted on the seat post so that I have the option of carrying a few things along for the ride (such as raingear?). However, I decided to leave it behind as it was taking up too much space in our luggage.

Once I arrived in Vancouver, I had second thoughts, and so I bought a Charlene seat pack from Porcelain Rocket.

It can take up to 5 L, while being quite a bit smaller and lighter than the Carradice. I’ve already found it very handy. The roll top closure can be used to carry extra stuff, such as a baguette:

or a wet raincape.

Final touch: a proper bell.

The bar end bell that I had been using never put out enough sound to satisfy me.

Now onto more vital matters…. such as training.

Why would a Canadian citizen want to travel on anything other than a Canadian passport?

For Hong Kong-born Canucks and their children, that simple question has been complicated in recent days by some discomfiting reports.

Bryan Irace writes:

Apple now claims that being a services company is important to them. If they’re able to address the latency and reliability issues that their services have historically been plagued with, they may have succeeded at exactly what they set out to improve. But I still personally won’t consider them a good services company until they take tangible steps towards making their APIs far more open than they have been to date. These types of companies understand that they alone cannot build all of the interactions their users would find useful (nor would targeted, limited partnerships suffice). They earn the adoration of their developer community by empowering them to create the next big app or feature, standing on the shoulders of giants rather than sitting in their pocket.

I completely agree with Bryan. iOS devices have become more powerful and capable in recent years as Apple has opened up the platform with extension support, custom keyboards, widgets, new developer APIs and more. In that same way, Apple's services from Apple Music to Apple's Notes app, could be improved through new APIs that go beyond client-side features. Imagine being able to connect something like IFTTT to Notes.app and creating a recipe to automatically append any links you favorite in Pocket to a note in Notes.app.

I think it will happen, but it could be a long wait. We've seen through the introduction of various extension points in iOS that Apple is extremely cautious about relinquishing control. It just won't happen overnight, it'll be a gradual expansion in carefully considered and controlled stages. As Bryan points out, CloudKit web services (which can be openly communicated with over HTTP) may be an early reason for optimism.

Closed systems have enabled Apple (and members of their developer programs) to deliver many of the user experiences we know and love, but past performance does not equal future success. While embracing interoperability might require a philosophical shift away from what has worked to date, I worry that the alternative is Apple continuing to stretch themselves thinner and thinner as software continues to eat the world and hardware continues to become smaller, cheaper, and more ubiquitous.

→ Source: irace.me

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More malware further underpins a proprietary future. 

• More Android based malware has come to light where 10m infected devices could be generating fraudulent revenues of $3.6m per year.
• This brings the Android security problem into sharp focus once again further underpinning my long held opinion that the chaos that is Android is likely to become a series of tightly controlled proprietary systems.
• This latest malware is known as HummingBad and installs itself as a rootkit and then downloads many fraudulent apps which are then used to generate advertising revenue.
• All versions of Android are susceptible to this malware and there are an estimated 188,000 devices in North America implying that it is not just the unofficial versions of Android that are susceptible.
• This sort of occurrence is not abnormal but typically what happens is a rapid response from the platform owner and the issue is resolved within a week or two.
• Unfortunately, any security problem that requires a major update to the Android Open Source Package (AOSP) is virtually unfixable meaning that the issue will persist indefinitely.
• There are two issues that cause this problem.
  • First: Most Android devices are not updatable.
  • Android is a commoditised, brutally competitive market meaning that in the mid-range every cent of cost matters.
  • Making a device updateable means that extra resources have to be added to the device which are never reflected in the price.
  • Consequently, the vast majority of Android devices are not updateable to later versions of Android as there is no incentive for the device maker to add this capability.
  • Second: Google has no control over the update process for any of the devices that run its services.
  • It can update Google Mobile Services (GMS) from Google Play but lower level system updates (Android) are controlled by either the maker of the device or the mobile operator.
  • The two exceptions are Xiaomi and Cyanogen both of whom have retained the ability to update devices running their software.
  • This is provided that the devices themselves are updateable as per the first issue above.
• This is just another reason why usage of Android devices is likely to continue trailing that of iOS and why these devices are likely to yield a much lower return for the ecosystems that run upon them.
• For example RFM estimates that Google can earn $31.6 per user per year from an iOS device whereas its own Android devices can only generate $14.0 per user per year on average.
• Part of this is due to the differences in demographics between the two ecosystems but I am certain that most of it is due to the fact that Android devices are more difficult to use, less secure and as a result, generate much less traffic.
• I think that this lower usage also drives lower loyalty meaning that Android users are willing to try something else.
• Fortunately for Android, there is nothing else at the moment but that does not mean that this will be the case forever.
• This is why I see Google, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Cyanogen and others all taking their versions of Android fully proprietary as then they will be able to control fragmentation, update the devices when needed as well as fix security flaws.
• I think that this will begin in earnest in 2017 with Google leading the way as Oracle has given it the perfect excuse to do so (see here).
• Failure to fix this problem is likely to hurt Android revenues in the long term leading to Google’s shares looking even more overvalued.
• I continue to prefer Baidu, Microsoft and Samsung to Google in the immediate term.

BlackBerry spinning the news:

the Classic has long surpassed the average lifespan for a smartphone in today’s market. We are ready for this change so we can give our customers something better

This post on BlackBerry's blog is a masterful piece. It avoids revealing the whole story: BlackBerry stops making BB10 devices. The Classic has been very successful, and BlackBerry probably has low inventory levels. Next thing on the list is the Leap, which lasts until the end of September. And then there is the Passport, which sold out initially as BlackBerry was careful not to make too many. Maybe they overestimated demand and made too many. The AT&T model with rounded corners is phased out first with no information about the regular one.

Don't worry about support. That is going to last another two years until the end of 2018. Just don't expect any new features or devices.

With "give our customers something better" BlackBerry avoids saying Android. I would argue that BlackBerry 10 is better than Android in every single aspect but one: market penetration. BlackBerry can't walk alone, so they now try for a unique position: secure Android.

These comments were started in response to a friend, who was taking a stand against Facebook and their take-it-or-leave-it end user license agreement (EULA). They’re not the most profound comments, nor the most well-crafted, but I think they need to exist (also) outside of Facebook’s corporate walled garden. Ironically, after I posted the first comment, the Facebook iPad app prompted me to take a survey about how (un)comfortable I was with the state of Facebook, with specific questions asking about the algorithmic feed. So, I filled it in to indicate that I am very (VERY) uncomfortable with the algorithmic news feed…

From the Facebook post that triggered my responses:

OK, then: I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information, messages or posts, both past and future. With this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of privacy can be punished by law (UCC 1-308- 1 1 308-103 and the Rome Statute). NOTE: Facebook is now a public entity. All members must post a note like this. If you prefer, you can copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once it will be tactically allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in the profile status updates.

And, my responses:

No. By using Facebook, you give them the right to do everything outlined in their EULA. You don’t have to like it, but you agreed to it by activating your account. I’m seriously considering nuking my Facebook account (again, for maybe the third time) because of Facebook’s creepiness and overreaching, and their messing around with privacy and experimentation with algorithms – I can’t trust their algorithmic news feed because I have no idea how it works (but I do – it is obviously optimized to maximize eyeball-time rather than to act as a news feed). But Facebook is where many of my extended family exist online, and where many of my non-online-innovation friends hang out. So, I’m stuck. Nuke my FB account to withdraw from corporate greed, or keep connected with friends and family, while choking back the distaste. Sigh.

I’d guess that unless FB is reclassified as a utility rather than a proprietary social network, there’s not much hope. It’s completely their game, and if we don’t like it, we have to leave. Or, governments have to step in to say it’s more than a social network and needs to be regulated to ensure we have fair and equitable access to the information managed on our behalf. It’s now the biggest news publisher, with no transparency on editorial oversight over the algorithms. Kind of a scary thing to have in a democracy…

and so, here we are. Democracy vs. Capitalism. When many (most?) people are unclear about the definitions of either. When everyone is a lottery ticket (or a TLC reality show contract) away from being a millionaire, they identify with successful capitalists and against “the people” (who are then recast as freeloaders and bums). When popularity and fame are equated with democratic representation, we’re left with reality show dropouts as viable contenders for the most powerful governmental position on the planet. Holy shit this is scary stuff.

Vor gut einem Jahr erschien mein Artikel Attacke auf die Girocard. Thema war die Motivation der Discounter, Kreditkarten einzuführen und die längerfristigen Auswirkungen auf Mobile Payment.

Zusammen mit der Aktivierung der NFC Schnittstelle, eigentlich nur ein kleiner Schritt. Die Auswirkungen von solch „minimalen“ Veränderungen am POS hätte ich mir so nie vorgestellt. Welches „Neuland“ wir auf dem Weg zum Mobile Payment betreten haben – und wieviel noch vor uns liegt – zeigt die folgende Liste.

1. Neuland Kreditkarte

Die Girocard kennt nur die PIN als zulässige Verifikationsmethode. Bei der Kreditkarte dagegen haben noch eine Reihe von Banken die Unterschrift an erster Stelle hinterlegt. Obwohl die Karten mit einem EMV Chip ausgestattet sind, muss der Kunde an der Kasse also einen Beleg unterschreiben. Das hatte sich der auf Performance getrimmte Discounter Aldi Süd wohl anders vorgestellt. Trotz aller professionellen Freundlichkeit war hier dem Kassenpersonal der Unwillen über die ungewohnte Prozessverzögerung anzumerken. Einige Mitarbeiter mussten sich zudem darauf einstellen, dass es bei der Kreditkarte kein einheitliches Prozedere gibt und verlangten, trotz erfolgter PIN Eingabe, bei Kreditkarten immer eine Unterschrift.

2. Neuland kontaktloses Bezahlen

Warum sich die meisten Lebensmitteldiscounter so schwer taten, die kontaktlose Schnittstelle frei zu schalten, konnte man etwas später beobachten. Endlose Diskussionen, ob denn jetzt für Beträge unter 25 Euro eine Unterschrift geleistet werden muss oder nicht. Wer mit einem NFC Smartphone bezahlte, konnte durch die Frage wogegen man die Unterschrift denn prüfen wolle, den Spuk meist beenden. Ein schönes Erlebnis hatte ich dann noch mal bei Aldi Süd. Hier rief die Filialleiterin das komplette Personal zusammen, damit alle zuschauen konnten, wie mit einem Smartphone kontaktlos bezahlt wird.

3. Neuland Payback Pay

Selbst das vom Handel nach dessen Vorstellungen gestaltete Payback Pay war nicht frei von Geburtswehen. Obwohl auch hier keine Raketentechnik zur Anwendung kommt, hatte dm es schlicht versäumt, alle Mitarbeiter über das Verfahren zu informieren. So kamen Beschwerden zum Dutzend in den sozialen Netzwerken über misslungene Zahlungsversuche. Man darf gespannt sein ob das bei Real besser läuft. Ein Testbericht dazu in Kürze.

4. Neuland Regulatorik

Ein weiteres Ärgernis ist, viele Händler haben nicht mitbekommen, dass die EU die Mindestgebühren bei Kartenzahlung abgeschafft hat. Ein Mindestumsatz ist somit hinfällig. Entweder werden die Händler von ihrem Zahlungsdienstleister über den Leisten gezogen oder sie wollen schlichtweg keine Kartenzahlung. Ein anderes Regulierungsthema: Die Anwender Auswahl wird ignoriert. Die Terminal Software ist noch nicht fertig. Das mindeste was die Händler aber machen könnten, wäre das Anbringen von Aufklebern über akzeptierte Zahlungsarten. Dies betrifft vor allem kleinere Händler, dabei kann dann auch der EC Karten Aufkleber gegen den der Girocard ausgetauscht werden.

5. Neuland Apple Pay

Als nächstes steht die Vorbereitung für Apple Pay auf dem Plan. Eigentlich sollte das an jedem Terminal funktionieren, wo kontaktlose Kreditkarten laufen. Eigentlich! Manche Terminals haben Schluckauf, wenn man ein iPhone davor hält. Hier hilft nur ein Konfigurationsupdate. Anfragen an den Kundendienst führen auch schon mal zu der Fehlauskunft, dass Apple Pay bewusst wieder deaktiviert worden ist. Übrigens wäre es sinnvoll das Kassenpersonal auf Apple Pay insoweit vorzubereiten, dass hier auch bei Beträgen über 25 Euro weder PIN am Terminal noch Unterschrift notwendig sind.

Und der Handel?

Fragt man den Handel, warum das alles so schwierig ist kommt der Hinweis, dass man ja schon selber die Aufgabe der Banken übernehme und den Kunden über die neuen Zahlverfahren informiert. Das ist aber nur die halbe Miete. Die Tatsache, dass sehr viele Bankmitarbeiter die neusten Zahlprodukte der eigenen Institute nicht kennen und man dort selbst von den Fachabteilungen zu spezifischen Fragen falsche Antworten bekommt, ist ein Offenbarungseid der Finanzbranche.

Aber an der Kasse steht kein verwirrter Konsument der nicht mehr durchblickt, sondern ein bestens informierter „Early Adopter“. Dieser trifft auf überfordertes Kassenpersonal, dessen ebenfalls überlasteter Filialleiter, die Schulungsunterlagen der Fachabteilung noch in der Schublade liegen hat.

Nach fünf Jahren Mobile Payment Erfahrung am POS kann ich vorher sagen, bei der geplanten Einführung von NFC für Payback Pay gibt es noch viel mehr Neuland zu entdecken. Das liegt aber wahrscheinlich genau wie bei Atlantis unter Wasser!

Canada has always been an island in the digital world.

According to a statement from Chrystia Freeland, the minister of international trade, Canada will eliminate tariffs that contribute to this mentality.

As a result of the implementation of an expanded Information Technology Agreement (ITA), Canadians may see lower costs and increased trade opportunities, particularly on technology products.

In implementing the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) expanded ITA, Canada eliminated tariffs on a list of 201 tech and information-related products. This agreement builds on the original 1996 ITA.

“Canada is pleased to see the elimination of tariffs on these additional 201 tech products. This will benefit Canadian businesses and workers, allowing for easier access to the latest technology and making our exports more attractive in foreign markets. We encourage our global partners to consider the benefits of joining this initiative,” said Freeland in a statement sent to MobileSyrup.

On July 1st Canada officially agreed to the terms, which eliminated tariffs on the majority of tech products under the ITA. The elimination of any remaining tariffs will take place over the next three years.

The statement went on to say that Canadian exporters of audiovisual products and parts, flight simulators, telecommunication products, software, media-storage devices, medical devices, touch-screen devices and medical equipment will benefit favourably from this deal.

Canada is one of 53 WTO members to be participating in the expanded ITA, which includes a list of 201 products that are listed in the official Declaration on the Expansion of Trade in Information technology Products.

Some of the consumer products included in the agreement include different kinds of machinery, audio equipment, headphones and earphones, digital cameras and video recorders and certain kinds of video games and consoles among many others.

Related reading: Canadian government launched ‘Innovation Agenda” website

When you learn things, you know them. Then, if you try to teach someone else, you realize you don’t know them, and you learn them at a deeper level. I recently tried to teach my teenager to parallel park. I’ve been successfully parallel parking for many decades, of course, but we needed to practice together to … Continue reading Learning, teaching, and knowing →

The post Learning, teaching, and knowing appeared first on without bullshit.

I  leased a condo on the upper East Side of Manhattan through Craigslist while doing some work in New York City. It was in a building that allowed no rentals, and I agreed to stay there less than 29 days. I paid all cash to a lady that had a local cable cooking show, and who rode around New York City in a Rolls Royce.

That slightly illegal deal has now been formalized by the disruptive technology group Airbnb.   As reported in the Vancouver Sun by Nick Eagland, the City of Vancouver is investigating the operation of 17 short-term rental units in a two storey building of 29 units located near Kitsilano Beach. The building’s name? The New York, of course.

So how does this happen?  As reported in the Vancouver Sun “In Vancouver, all rental tenancies must be at least 30 days except in hotels and licensed bed and breakfasts, but the vast majority of Airbnb hosts violate this regulation. In online reviews, many users say they stayed at the New York for just a few days.” 

If every building unit was leased out monthly for 30 days, there would be no short-term rentals which take valuable rental housing stock away from local renters, and provide higher net  income to the landlord which may be undeclared for tax purposes.

A student at SCARP (School of Community and Regional Planning) at the University of British Columbia, Iain Marjoribanks has been studying the impacts of Airbnb on the rental market.  His findings are telling. Airbnb has a centralized control of all listings and charges a 9 to 15 per cent service fee on all bookings. The company conceals the location and identity of the hosts offering rooms, making enforcement challenging for municipalities. He surmises that 99.3 per cent of all Airbnb Vancouver stays are less than 30 days.

Surprisingly the majority of bookings and revenue come from a minority of hosts-property managers who list several houses or units consistently over long time periods, using Airbnb’s anonymity to avoid municipal enforcement.

Marjoribanks estimates that one out of every 14 secondary suites in Vancouver have been converted from rental to Airbnb. In 2015, out of 4,728 December listings  3,529 had a review, suggesting that they had been leased. That is a lot of units in short-term rental in the city.

Marjoribanks points out that Airbnb as well as the owners of short-term rentals need to be accountable and suggests registering and tracking these units. He further notes that any  attempt to regulate without clarity and accountability by web providers and landlords will exacerbate the current situation. Quite simply, just enforcing would  “legitimize Airbnb’s operations and undermine municipalities’ authority to regulate zoning and business within their borders.” The challenge will be for local governments to band together to demand transparency  from Airbnb which has been operating like a Manhattan maverick.

You can find out tomorrow, as Mobi bikes and people will be available:

Think about sponsorship . . . .

Demo Stations: Tomorrow July 6th, we will be showing the Mobi bikes and handing out membership kits at our Burrard and Melville St. station from 11am- 2pm.

We will also be at the Dunsmuir and Beatty station from 3pm-6pm.

Come say hi!

Federico is back to discuss his thoughts on his first VR experience. This leads to a discussion on what Nintendo's VR plans could be, before wrapping up with some thoughts on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

A good VR-focused episode of Remaster this week, with a final segment on Zelda. You can listen here.

Sponsored by:

• Squarespace: Enter offer code INSERTCOIN at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
• Zombies Run: Running is really boring, but the Zombies, Run! Virtual Race makes it fun!

→ Source: relay.fm

Today, the world’s largest tech company showed its support for NASA’s mission to the solar system’s largest planet.

In typical Google fashion, the tech giant celebrated NASA’s Juno mission with an animated Doodle that links directly to search results about the Jupiter mission.

Juno, a spacecraft launched back in 2011, reached its destination in orbit around Jupiter today. The doodle depicts an animated crew jumping for job as Juno transmits celebratory emoji back to Earth.By clicking on the doodle, users will be taken to a search page where they can track the ship’s progress beginning with its launch in 2011 to its approach to Jupiter over the last few weeks.

This spacecraft was launched to find out more about Jupiter, though more details should be released at the end of Juno’s a 53-day orbit.

Related reading: Bring the galaxy into your living room with NASA’s revamped Apple TV app

On this date in 2010, at 3:05pm, my partner Trish died. We had been together thirty-two years. Since then, at a time when most people are settling down domestically, I have had to start again. So far, my new start has not included a new relationship. Nor do I expect to.

Whenever I state my current situation, most people assume that it troubles me. They imagine that I am discouraged, and tell me to cheer up, that a new relationship could happen at any time. A relationship is such an important part of their lives, they cannot imagine someone who does not share their pre-occupation. From their perspective, I must be being stoic, wearing a brave face while being shredded inside.

What they don’t understand (and probably never will, unless they are widowed themselves) is that I mean exactly what I say. I wouldn’t refuse another relationship. I might even take a chance on a less promising relationship. However, it is no longer a priority

Perhaps part of my attitude is my realization that, unless you divorce or break up, a relationship is going to end with one of you dying – a fact that popular culture conveniently ignores. Having faced that overwhelming event once, I admit that I am nervous about facing it twice. Emotionally, the death of your partner is overwhelming, and, even after your grief has quietened to a chronic condition that is always in the background, it puts you out of sync with your family and generation.

Still, I might take a chance – but only if I thought my new relationship had any chance of being as successful as the one I shared with Trish. We worked hard on our relationship, and, even after thirty years, many people assumed that we had just found each other. When I have had the best, why should I settle for anything less, just because I am afraid of dying alone (and I am afraid) – or, worse, because everyone thinks that I should be hanging out on OK Cupid, and taking night school classes in the hopes of meeting someone?

Having been lucky once, I am not greedy. I have had my share – in fact, more than my share, when I observe many of the relationships around me.

However, the main reason I am not particularly eager for a new relationship is that, in the last six years, I have learned to survive alone. I have learned to go to parties without being supported by someone or supporting them. I have learned that, if I don’t do a chore, it won’t get done. I have learned to live without having someone with whom to share absurd or puzzling moments. Now my calendar is my own, and I stay up or go to bed early without consulting anyone else.

At first, I didn’t care for being responsible for no one except my parrots and I. But I survived – I had no choice, because a minimal number of things always had to be done each day, even after I had plunged into the bureaucracy of death and out the other side. Now, I am like a castaway who, after praying each day for rescue, realizes that I have become accustomed to my own solitude.

In fact, I suspect I am no longer fit for a relationship, anymore than, after twelve years of freelancing, I am fit for working in an office. Inevitably, I have grown egocentric. Unlike most people, I no longer define myself by my relationships – not even the one that Trish and I shared.

I think wistfully of a relationship from time to time, but I abandoned worrying about relationships – or a lack of them – several years ago. In the last six years, I have learned to live with myself, accomplished a few things that satisfy me, and even to find a bit of contentment. But the difference between me and the average adult is that relationships no longer define me.

By your standards, I might be poorly adjusted. However, I no longer expect what most people suspect. You may not understand my perspective but, then, I no longer understand yours either, except by a conscious act of empathy.

Please do me the courtesy, though, of believing that I mean what I say. For the most part, I am content with my adjustments to life – even if many of those adjustments are not the ones I expected to be making at this stage of my life.

Tracks disappearing, temporary surfaces appearing.

Like other Greenways in the City, this one will be a treasure when completed.

fiery is a new Rook/httuv-based R web server in town created by @thomasp85 that aims to fill the gap between raw http & websockets and Shiny with a flexible framework for handling requests and serving up responses.

The intent of this post is to provide a quick-start to using it setup a prediction API service.

We’ll be using the super complex model described in the first example of the predict.lm manual page and save the fitted model out so we can load it up in the web server and use it for predicting values from inputs.

set.seed(1492)
x <- rnorm(15)
y <- x + rnorm(15)
fit <- lm(y ~ x)
saveRDS(fit, "model.rds")

The code is annotated, but the gist is to:

• Fire up the server (NOTE: it puts itself on 0.0.0.0 by default so CHANGE THIS until you’re ready for production)
• Load the saved model
• Setup the routing for the requests
• Send back the model as JSON (since it’s an API vs something meant for humans)

Here’s the code (jump past it for more info):

suppressPackageStartupMessages(library(fiery))
suppressPackageStartupMessages(library(utils))
suppressPackageStartupMessages(library(jsonlite))
suppressPackageStartupMessages(library(shiny))

app <- Fire$new()

# This is absolutely necessary unless you're deliberately trying
# to expose the service to the entire network you are on which
# you probably don't want to do until in test / stage / prod

app$host <- "127.0.0.1"
app$port <- 9123 # completely arbitrary selection, make it whatevs

model <- NULL

# When the app starts, we'll load the model we saved. This
# particular one is just the first example on ?predict.lm.
# This doesn't have to be global, per se, but this makes
# for a quick example of how to setup an model API server

app$on("start", function(server, ...) {
  message(sprintf("Running on %s:%s", app$host, app$port))
  model <<- readRDS("model.rds")
  message("Model loaded")
})

# when the request comes in, route it properly. this will
# be *much* nicer with Thomas' `routr` plugin, but you can
# get up and running now this way until it's fully documented
# and on CRAN.
#
# 3 routes:
#
# if "/" then return an empty HTML page
# if "/info" give some data about the server (just for example purposes)
# if "/predict?val=##" run the value through the model
#
# No error checking or anything as this is (again) a simple
# example

app$on('request', function(server, id, request, ...) {

  response <- list(
    status = 200L,
    headers = list('Content-Type'='text/html'),
    body = ""
  )

  # this helps us see what the path is
  path <- get("PATH_INFO", envir=request)
  if (path == "/info") {

    # Build a list of all the request headers so we can 
    # regurgitate them

    out <- sapply(grep("^[A-Z_0-9]+", names(request), value=TRUE), function(x) {
      sprintf("%s: %s", x, get(x, envir=request))
    })
    out <- paste0(out, collapse="\n")

    response$body <- sprintf("<pre>Connection Id: %s\n\n%s</pre>", id, out)

  } else if (grepl("^/predict", path)) {

    # this gets the query string; we're expecting val=##
    # but aren't going to do any error checking here.
    # You also would want to ensure there is nothing 
    # malicious in the query string.
    query  <- get("QUERY_STRING", envir=request)

    # handy helper function from the Shiny folks
    input <- shiny::parseQueryString(query)

    message(sprintf("Input: %s", input$val))

    # run the prediction and add the input var value to the list
    res <- predict(model, data.frame(x=as.numeric(input$val)), se.fit = TRUE)
    res$INPUT <- input$val

    # we want to return JSON
    response$headers <- list("Content-Type"="application/json")
    response$body <- jsonlite::toJSON(res, auto_unbox=TRUE, pretty=TRUE)

  }

  response

})

# don't fire off a browser call
app$ignite(showcase=FALSE)

Assuming you’ve saved that as modelserver.r, you can fire that up in R/RStudio-proper or on the command-line with Rscript modelserver.r (also assuming the fitted model RDS file is in the same directory which is prbly not a good idea for production as well).

You can either enter something like http://127.0.0.1:9123/predict?val=-1.5 into your browser to see the JSON result there ore use cURL:

$ curl http://127.0.0.1:9123/predict?val=-1.5
{
  "fit": -0.8545,
  "se.fit": 0.5116,
  "df": 13,
  "residual.scale": 1.1088,
  "INPUT": "-1.5"
}

or even httr:

httr::content(httr::GET("http://127.0.0.1:9123/predict?val=-1.5"))
$fit
[1] -0.8545

$se.fit
[1] 0.5116

$df
[1] 13

$residual.scale
[1] 1.1088

$INPUT
[1] "-1.5"

Try hitting http://127.0.0.1:9123/ and http://127.0.0.1:9123/info in similar ways to see what you get.

Keep a watchful eye on routr as it will make setting up API servers in R much easier than this. So far I’m finding fiery a nice middle-ground between writing raw httuv servers, abusing Shiny (since it’s really meant for UX work) or dealing with the slightly more complex opencpu package for turning R into a web request handling engine.

Ideally, one would put this behind a security-aware reverse proxy for both safety (you can add some web application firewall-ish rules) and load balancing, but for in-house/local testing, this is a super quick way to publish your models for wider use. Depending on the adoption rate of fiery, I’ll create some future posts that deal with the complexities of security and performance, along with how to put this all into something like Docker for rapid, controlled deployments.

Adrian Colyer, The Morning Paper, Jul 08, 2016

This article gives you a sense of where one branch of artificial intelligence is working today. Researchers are testing their neural network algorithms against four standard tasks in natural language analysis:

• Part-of-speech tagging (POS), labels each word with a tag that indicates its syntactic role in a sentence
• Chunking labels phrases or segments within a sentence with tags that indicate their syntactic role
• Named-entity Recognition (NER) labels recognised entities within the sentence. For example, as a person, location, date, time, company
• Semantic-role labeling (SRL) “ gives a semantic role to a syntactic constituent of a sentence.” More.

The challenge here is o succeed at these tasks "without needing task-specific representations or engineering." It is often the case that you can tweak the result with a hint here or there. Anyhow, this paper describes attempts to design neural networks to attempt these tasks, and how we can score the results to see how well the network is doing.

David Hopkins, Technology Enhanced Learning Blog, Jul 08, 2016

This is another useful attempt to help people get a base-level understanding of what a blockchain is and does. Transactions are encrypted and put into blocks. "A block is the ‘ current’ part of a blockchain which records some or all of the recent transactions, and once completed goes into the blockchain as permanent database."

It has been several days since Tjaden Hess, River Keefer and I wrote about how Ethereum's planned DAO Wars soft fork is a potential vector for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. That blog post prompted a community-wide re-thinking of fork dynamics. In this post, we want to delve into the ramifications of that post.

What does the second law of thermodynamics tell us about knowledge management? There’s some pretty complex mathematics around the laws of thermodynamics, but the poet’s version will do for our purposes:

1. You can’t win
2. You’re going to lose
3. You can’t get out of the game

Life is a constant battle against entropy or disorder. Cars break down; they don’t repair themselves. Left to themselves, files, books, and ideas become disorganized. Organizations and the knowledge workers inside them are engaged in a constant, but doomed, fight against entropy; the order they bring is always temporary.

Knowledge management is one of many disciplines engaged in that fight. If entropy is destined to win, what does that tell us about how to carry on the fight?

It reminds us that perfection is the wrong goal. You can’t define a perfect taxonomy; 100% compliance with the documentation standards is wasted effort; there will always be something more pressing than the paperwork. This matters because the personalities attracted to the apparent orderliness of knowledge management tend to be seekers of this impossible perfection. You want to temper that predisposition, not feed it.

Surrendering to disorder isn’t a good strategy either. Let the reality of entropy shape our strategies and practices. There are things we should worry less about and things we might better do differently.

We should worry a lot less about perfection and completeness and strive instead for a standard of “good enough”. That requires more judgment and sensitivity to unique circumstance than most organizations—and many individuals—are comfortable with. Black and white makes for easier, albeit impossible, compliance standards and management.

If you are in a position to shift an organization in the direction of more gray, encourage that. If you are enmeshed in unrealistic organizational expectations, strive for only as much compliance as will keep the auditors and censors at bay. I’m not advocating open rebellion, or even mild “civil disobedience”; simply be comfortable that you have the laws of physics on your side while you quietly ignore stupider requirements.

If entropy is the law, how might you operate differently?

Learn where small efforts now postpone or eliminate major remediation efforts. Whatever you opt to do now, you are going to live with that choice later. Make your choices with that appreciation of a disorderly later. You are never going to go back later to add the appropriate tag, improve the name of the file, or reorganize the project team’s directories. Recognize the places and moments where a tiny injection of order now will pay lasting dividends. Don’t pretend that you can get organized after the press of the immediate has passed.

Entropy is inevitable. As a knowledge worker, your task is to create pockets of order out of the noise. As you create those pockets, don’t increase the noise everywhere else.

HMP Comics

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